Closing Credits: Retiring ECP SVP Tommy Ward Reflects on Exchange Career

In 2001, Tommy Ward was working at an investment brokerage firm in Oklahoma City when his girlfriend (now wife), who was living in Dallas, found a job he was suited for at the Army & Air Force Exchange Service.

“She’d found this job and sent my information in, because she wanted me to move closer to her,” said Ward, whose biggest connection to the military was an older brother—about 16 years older—who had served 23 years in the Army. “I’d been on installations with my brother, and when I learned more about the job, I realized what the Exchange was.”

He was hired Sept. 2, 2002, beginning a 21-year-plus career that will end with his retirement at the end of July.

A head for business

Ward, the senior vice president of the Exchange Credit Program (ECP), has spent most of his Exchange career in finance-oriented positions, going back to his first days at the Exchange, when he was in the Financial Management College Trainee Program.

“Even when I was younger, I always had an aptitude for this,” he said. “In high school, I’d worked at National American Insurance Company as a premium audit clerk. It was a part-time job—I started in the mailroom and by the time I started college, I was working in Premium Auditing.”

He started college at Oklahoma State University as a marketing major, but realized he didn’t like that as much as finance, so he switched majors. “I really liked the organization of finance,” Ward said. “I liked making things match. I liked the financial markets. It all attracted me more into the finance realm.”

After graduation, he got a job as an investment representative at Edward Jones, a financial-advice company. “It was a blend of finance and marketing, and in your first year, you really don’t get too deep into it,” he said. “I learned quickly that I preferred the data side to the sales side.”

That was when his girlfriend found the job posting for a financial management college trainee at the Exchange. “I’d been out of college for only a year, so I thought, ‘I’ll give it a try.’”

Driven by data—then making a turn

Ward was one of six in his college trainee program. When they graduated, Jami Richardson—who would go on to be his predecessor as SVP of the credit program—was Director of General Accounting in the Controller Division.

“At the time, the senior executives got to pick which of the trainees they wanted for their division,” Ward said. “It was like a draft. Jami selected me to be on her cash and sales process team. I think she saw that my aptitude was more for process flow and creating improvements.”

And then he didn’t actually go to work for Richardson. She lent Ward to Steve Donaldson, who was the Exchange risk manager. Ward had taught himself Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a program used in database building. This made him a good fit for working on the Finance & Accounting Risk Management Database System (known as FARMS), a risk model for all Exchange accounts.

That may sound a little headspinning, but Ward liked working on the project.

“There was a lot of repetition in building it,” he said. “It wasn’t like a puzzle or a model, but it was similar in that you’d come in, have bigger-picture ideas and build up to them,” he said. “I enjoyed it. I liked building the database and seeing the results and interactivity when you created the facing screens to pull the data.”

“During that time, Jim Mace, who was Director of Budget & Analysis, called me in and said, ‘If you keep doing these database jobs, that’s all you’re going to be known for.’

“I said, ‘Well, I want to be a Finance & Accounting person.’ He said, ‘Then you need to broaden and not just take on roles building databases.’ That made me realize that I needed to stop saying that was what I could do, because I could do so much more.”

Around 2003, the Exchange Credit Program was moved from what was then known as the Cyber Region to Finance & Accounting, specifically under the Treasury division. Treasurer Grant Morris asked Ward to serve as a business analyst for the program, working for Jan Adrian.

“I had a lot of help from senior leaders at the time,” Ward said. “A lot of very tenured people took the time to explain the history, role and importance of the credit program. It was a mandate from Congress in 1979—to provide reasonable, responsible credit to active-duty Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors, Marines and their families, so it would protect them from predatory lenders off-post.

“I really took heart in understanding the value it provided our customers. I related to them so much, being new to finance, new to being on my own, new to understanding credit scores and their importance to your financial health.”

Ward moved up in FA, with increased responsibility in financial analyst roles. Then in 2008, he found another way to connect with Exchange customers: Deployment.

The rewards of deployment

In 2008, Ward was working as a financial analyst in Germany, based at Mainz-Kastel. He deployed to Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; Pristina, Kosovo; and Camps Butmir and Bondsteel, both in Kosovo.

“It was an amazing experience,” Ward said. “During my deployment, Kosovo declared its independence. It was amazing to see all the people in Pristina and how excited they were that they were beginning their own country.”

Ward worked with other-country nationals in the Balkans and was impressed by their work ethic. “I couldn’t imagine such dedication after what they’d gone through during the Balkan Wars,” he said.

He later deployed to Balad Air Base in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

 

“I remember getting on the airplane to go to Iraq, and there’s a  20-something-year-old kid piloting it,” Ward said. “I was surprised by it, but it also furthered my appreciation for the service these young men and women provide and for the level of responsibility they’re given at such a young age.”

Ward’s only pre-Exchange connection to the military was his brother, which might make him seem like an unlikely candidate for Balad, which was dubbed “Mortaritaville” because of the frequency of mortar attacks. But he wanted to be there.

“I felt that it would help make me better as an associate, that it would give me a better appreciation for our mission—and it went beyond filling those wants and needs,” Ward said. “You get to see our value firsthand. En route to Balad, you went through Ali Al Salem Air Base in Kuwait. Seeing guys come in and eat Pizza Hut or drink Green Beans Coffee … you get to see the presence of comfort at those locations.”

That was also true at Balad, a large base that was home to several tactical field Exchanges (TFEs). Troops would rotate in and out, and experienced the tastes and comforts of home provided by the Exchange.

“Their demeanor changes,” he said. “It’s so valuable to them. Even when I was younger, I thought they were young. They seem like kids but they’re doing an amazing job. They signed up for it, and they have a sense of pride and respect. It was one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences I had at the Exchange.”

In 2010, he returned to headquarters—and to another rewarding experience.

Back to HQ—and then to ECP

Ward returned to headquarters as a senior pension analyst. The job helped him understand the Exchange’s institutional investments, its benefits program and what it does for associates.

“The pension plan is a promise that many people in the organization don’t realize has been promised to them,” he said. “My role was to keep that promise for as long as everyone who works here lives.”

After a temporary move to investment management, Ward became assistant treasurer, working  for Jim Jordan. “Mr. Jordan had a  unique management style, one I was not used to, but one I gained significant appreciation for,” Ward said. During that time in the Treasury Division, Ward participated in some major advancements. “We were able for the first time enter into the Commercial Paper Markets, a big change in creating liquidity and security for the Exchange.”

Then, in 2017, Jami Richardson—who had become SVP of Exchange Credit in 2014—selected Ward to be vice president of Credit Operations.

Operations provided an opportunity to see another side of the Credit Program. He went into the Customer Contact Center for the first time, managing ECP back-office operations.

“The Credit Program can really be divided into three houses: strategic marketing, operations and finance,” he said. “Operations allowed me to be hands-on with customer service, credit reporting, disputes and finance.”

When Richardson retired in 2019 after 31 years with the Exchange, Ward stepped into the SVP role. Richardson, who still serves as an Executive Advisor for the Exchange, had built a legacy of growth in the MILITARY STAR program, which Ward and his teams built on.

An expanding STAR

In September 2024, the Exchange Credit Program, in collaboration with Discover Networks, introduced a new MILITARY STAR card, with expanded acceptance that makes it easier for third parties to do business with the Exchange while reducing costs associated with credit card acceptance. It was perhaps the most significant achievement of Ward’s tenure as SVP of the Credit Program, but he says it might not have happened without Exchange Director/CEO Tom Shull.

Mr. Shull was the Exchange CEO who took a very proactive approach to expand the program,” Ward said. “He tasked us with questions when he became CEO: ‘Why can’t shoppers use the card at all MWR locations? Why can’t they use it at other places on base?’”

During Ward’s pre-deployment days in ECP—and before Shull’s 2012 arrival—the Exchange signed an agreement with a bank to do a co-branded card. But it wasn’t a good solution.

“It gave us extra capability, but it was limited and subject to the bank’s restraints,” Ward said. “It was a good idea, but it didn’t work, and we had to get out of that relationship.”

The ECP team researched solutions and discovered that by tapping into the credit card network, the MILITARY STAR card could ride the same rails as other credit card transactions while retaining its private-label status. “This was the lightbulb moment,” Ward said. “We could report back to Mr. Shull how we could make it work.”

The card’s Bank Identification Number (BIN) range, represented by the account number’s first few digits, is a Discover BIN range, Ward said—“But it’s our card. That allows us to open it up to anyone who can accept a credit card. It’s more secure, it’s less costly. We’re traveling a public highway as opposed to the private roads we used before.”

Retirement plans

Ward’s parents both died young—his father, Billy Ray Ward, passed away from a heart attack at age 39, when Ward was 5 years old, and his mother, Carrol Jo Ward, died at 63—a history that has influenced his outlook on retirements, especially when he became a father himself in 2014.

“It changed my perspective on life in that I wanted to find a way that I could be part of their lives and be the best dad that I could be,” Ward said. “I was very active in school and I did a lot of things. I had three brothers and two sisters, so my mom had to work a lot to support our household, so she wasn’t able to attend many things.”

“When I had my first kid, I wanted to spend as much time with him as possible. Now, he’s 10 and I have a little girl who’s 8. I thought, ‘I can take an early retirement. I’ll be able to spend so much time being a part of their lives that I never would have gotten back.”

As “family serving family” becomes more personal, Ward says it’s also been a driving force throughout his more than two decades at the Exchange.

“I can’t imagine being as fulfilled without having the opportunity to serve MILITARY STAR customers, and each and every one of our patrons,” he said. “The Exchange family has been so compassionate and caring and thoughtful. I would have been remiss if I hadn’t taken the opportunity in 2002 to become part of this organization. It would have been hard to find anything more rewarding. I wish more people could have these meaningful opportunities, because I think a lot people don’t feel as fulfilled as I feel at this point in my life.”

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